 Restarting agents and IC, How long does it take? |
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 Dec 27 2006, 08:50 AM
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#1
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Moving Target  Group: Members Posts: 118 Joined: 16-December 06 Member No.: 10,387  |
When an Agent or IC is taken down in cybercombat, is there anything in the rules that prevents the node from launching a fresh copy right away? What about an agent running in a hacker's persona? If the agent is taken out in combat, can the hacker just unload the program and load a fresh copy?
The house rule I have in mind is that any IC/agent taken out in combat is corrupted to a degree that it can't be unloaded. It (and any programs it was running) are stuck as running programs in the node until the node completes a system reset. I think that solves the problem of IC that pops back up whenever you kill it, but it still leaves some holes. For example, an agent could be unloaded and reloaded to repair it to full health, which makes the Medic program pretty pointless for agents/IC. That may be fine, though. Perhaps this would work as a house rule: unloading damaged/crashed agent or IC programs requires an Extended System + Response Test (boxes of damage, 1 combat turn). Has anyone run into this as an issue before? In practice, I suppose it's not a problem in hostile systems, because the GM can just choose to not have IC reappear. I'd like for there to be some game mechanic that backs that up, though, just for a sense of consistency. |
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Dec 27 2006, 10:57 AM
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#2
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Awakened Asset Group: Members Posts: 4,464 Joined: 9-April 05 From: AGS, North German League Member No.: 7,309 |
Nothing prevents an immediate reload of an agent program. Itīs somehow better to avoid detection than enter combat with enemies that can simply respawn.
If you take away that capability of IC the matrix becomes very hacker-friendly due to a lack of effective defense measures. Maybe Unwired will offer a means of "supressing" IC . |
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Dec 27 2006, 08:40 PM
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#3
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 118 Joined: 16-December 06 Member No.: 10,387 |
Interesting. So it's basically a waste of time to engage in cybercombat with IC or an agent. I suppose that's reasonable. Passive defenses are so weak in the Matrix that it's balancing to make the active defenses stronger. And I suppose there are still interesting ways to attack a system that involve cybercombat. For example, you hack into a system, and you're detected by IC (running from a different node) that starts attacking you. You sit there absorbing its attacks for a few actions while you change the access codes for the node. Then you turn around and crash the IC in cybercombat. The IC pops right back up in its home node, but it can't get back into the current node to attack you. Or you could use cybercombat to stop IC that's running a trace against you. If you crash it, it will have to start the trace from scratch (presumably) when it's respawned. |
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Dec 27 2006, 08:45 PM
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#4
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Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,526 Joined: 9-April 06 From: McGuire AFB, NJ Member No.: 8,445 |
My take on it:
Attack programs are designed to corrupt the data of whatever program it attacks; Persona, agents, other programs, data files or the node itself (system). In the case of an agent, the data of the agent is corrupted to a point that it cant run properly and crashes. This data can only be repaired if it has the Medic program run on it or the entire node which the agent is on (IE your commlink if it is connected to your persona) fully resets itself by performing a restart test. This prevents the never ending IC/Agent woes to hackers, though the system admin could just restart the node to kick the hacker off anyways. |
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Dec 27 2006, 11:25 PM
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#5
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Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 7,089 Joined: 4-October 05 Member No.: 7,813 |
does that answer your question? |
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